Wood Chip Piles Suck

"On to phase two!" Jethro swept his arm across the counter of the abandoned diner we were currently held out in. Cups and plates fell to the ground, many of them shattering. Not caring, he pulled a piece of paper from his bag and set it down on the counter. "Alright this is a map of the city."

"That's great, I can definitely see that from down here." I sarcastically remarked.

Jethro clicked his tongue. "Tch. I swear, of all the aliens, I get stuck with the one with an attitude."

"What do you want me to do? I'm a plastic disc on wheels." I retorted back at him.

He let out a huff, as if picking me up and placing me on the counter was putting him out. "Back to what I was saying." Pulling a black marker from his pocket, he started marking the map up. "This circle is our current location. If my hunch is correct, your alien buddy is probably being held somewhere near the state Capitol building."

"What if he's not there?"

"Then we start blowing stuff up." He pulled out a red marker and drew explosions where the state capitol building was.

"I have to admit, I like this plan." They say violence is never the answer, but with everything these bear guys have put me through, I think it's more of a question and the answer to that question is yes.

Jethro began searching through his duffle bag. "Now it's time to switch to our phase two camouflage." Within an instant, he changed out of his ghillie suit and into a brown bear onesie. "With this costume, as long as we keep our distance from the other bear guys, we should be able to walk around no questions asked."

"Wouldn't it have been easier just to do this from the beginning?" I wondered.

Jethro shrugged. "To be perfectly frank, I just wanted an excuse to use my ghillie suit... Nevermind that though, I have one for you too." He proceeded to place a headband with panda ears on top of me.

I doubted this was going to fool anyone, but I really didn't feel like wasting time arguing with him.

"Let's get-..." Jethro paused as there was a voice that suddenly came from outside.

"I heard talking! Who's in bear?" A raspy voice spoke.

"Just play it cool, alien." Jethro whispered to me.

I followed him, as he cautiously exited the diner with his hands held up. The person outside was dressed in a sun bear costume and had a green military officer's hat on his head. "What the heck were you two doing in bear? All bearsonnel have orders to report to the Western bearpost." He he twirled his handlebar mustache with his fingers as he glared at us suspiciously.

"We heard a...uh... very-... I mean beary strange noise coming from inside, so we were inbearstigating it. It just ended up being a mouse... right, bear buddy?" Jethro stared at me to confirm his story.

"Yeah... that's bearfinitly what happened." There was no way this guy was going to buy this.

The sun bear officer stared at me for a moment, then back at Jethro. "That seems bearleivable to me..."

By some miracle, this guy actually bought that I was one of them. These bear lunatics were dumber than I thought.

"It was nice chatting, but my companion and I have other bearsiness to attend to." We turned our backs to him and attempted to be on our way. Unfortunately he stopped us again.

"Nice try, but when I say ebearyone was ordered to the western bearpost, that means ebearyone."

Jethro's hand twitched as he hovered it over the pocket where he kept his taser. "I didn't get the memo. What exactly is going on over ther-... I mean bear?"

"I don't know the full beartails, but abearantly something strange appeared out of nobear. Ebearyone have been ordered to inbearstigate." Sun bear officer responded.

Jethro relaxed his hand and moved it away from his taser. Judging from the expression on his face, his curiosity was sparked. "Lead the way, bearfficer!"

Not really having a choice in the matter, I rolled along with Jethro, as he followed the sun bear guy. I wasn't entirely sure what he was thinking, but I assumed it probably had something to do with aliens. Once we were done getting sidetracked, hopefully we could get back to the task at hand.

🐻🐻🐻

As we arrived at the outpost, a large group of bear people were already gathered. It seemed like whatever was going on, had stirred up quite the commotion, as everyone was chattering amongst themselves.

"Bear your excitement and make way." The sun bear officer ordered, as he moved through the crowd.

Unsure what we were supposed to do, we just tailed behind him. Up at the front of the guardpost were two rickety looking guard towers that were haphazardly built from sheets of scrap metal. Between them was a large rusty iron barred gate.

"What's all this bearmotion about?" The officer called up to the black bear in one of the guard towers.

The guard crawled down from his post and saluted the officer as he stood in front of him. "Bearfficer bear sir, bear is a pile of woodchips outside the gate, sir."

The officer shot him a skeptical look. "You mean to tell me that you called everybeardy here because of some wood chips?"

"No bearfficer bear sir, one minute it was bearsiness as usual, the next they just appeared." The guard continued holding his salute as he spoke.

"Hmm... that's bearcular." He pointed to a scrawny guy in a brown bear costume. "You right bear, go poke it with a stick." There happened to be a wooden broom handle laying off to the side, which someone in the crowd picked up and tossed over to the scrawny bear guy.

Picking it up, he nervously saluted the officer. "B-bear yes b-bear."

The guards opened the gate and the scrawny bear guy anxiously walked toward the wood chip pile. Everyone watched in anticipation. When he was just a foot away from the pile, he raised his stick, hesitating for a moment before sticking it in.

He went silent for about thirty seconds until a look for fear developed on his face. Dropping the stick, he began running back toward the gate. "Oh bear, those definitely aren't wood chips!"

As the scrawny bear made it halfway between the pile and the gate, the pile began shifting around on its own, almost seeming to be moving.

"What do you-?" The officer stopped mid sentence, as the pile rolled forward as a single mass. With a look of utter dread on his face, the scrawny bear was swallowed up by the pile.

"Is that what I think it is?" I muttered to Jethro.

"If you're thinking roaches, then yes." Without wasting another second, he picked me up and started in the other direction.

It seemed like all the other bear people were thinking the same thing as us because every single one of them, including the officer, broke out into a panic, as they let out screams of terror and ran as fast as they could from the guardpost. The mass of cockroaches flooded in like a tsunami, swallowing up everything in its path.

With the army of roaches just at his heels, Jethro quickly dove through a glass window pane of a brick building, shattering it. Ignoring the shards of glass that were sticking out of his forearms, he found a set of stairs, which he climbed ten stories until he made it to the rooftop.

"Something tells me Roachard is behind this." I spoke as he set me down.

"When I bought you from that roach guy, he did say something about sending his legions of roaches to reclaim the world... I didn't think he was serious though." Jethro spoke while pulling glass fragments from his skin and placing smiley face bandages over the wounds.

"He said something along those lines to me too. I have to say, that trojan horse strategy was a pretty effective surprise attack." I responded.

"I wouldn't underestimate the beary bandits though. They managed to take over all of Nebraska in less than a month. I doubt they're going to go down without a fight." Jethro stared out at the city from the roof top, as sirens began to blair. "We need to find your alien friend even more now. There's no telling what damage could be done if alien secrets fall into either the bears’ or the roaches' hands."

If by some miracle Eddy is still alive and is in fact here in the city, you're definitely going to be disappointed when you meet him.

As chaos unfolded beneath us, I couldn't believe that control over the world... or at the very least the state of Nebraska was being fought between a cockroach monarchy and an insane bear cult. To be perfectly frank, I wasn’t sure which was worse...